


L’Homme au Masque

by HarlotsHouse



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: M/M, Masks, Missing Persons, Open Ending, Other Worlds, Romance, Up for interpretation, Was he real?, Will misses Hannibal, masquerade balls, metaphors for death, slight angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-24 08:35:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30069567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarlotsHouse/pseuds/HarlotsHouse
Summary: Even Will was not left unmoved by the elegance and classical aestheticism, growing dizzy with the sensatory details all around him. As he walked through the ocean of twirling dance partners, he grew the sense that someone was watching him. He searched through the smiling, laughing faces of the crowd the way one looks for lost treasure, until his gaze rested on a man, stood unmoving from across the room. Despite the distance and the stranger's fully masked face Will saw his importance in his tall frame and poised gentility.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Kudos: 23
Collections: Hannibal Flashfic #009





	L’Homme au Masque

"What is it about this place that has you on edge, Will?"

_{The ceiling that stretched off into infinity depicted a choir of angels perched on soft painted clouds, the expanse of the ceiling was vaguely translucent, enough so the intricate chandeliers hanging from it gave the illusion that they had been strung directly from the night sky._

_Will straightened his gaze to observe the full ballroom.}_

'I've been here before' Will thought as he surveyed the damaged arena of what was once the great dancing hall.

"You're familiar with the concept of de ja vu, right Jack?"

Will glanced over at Jack after his silence. Jack stared hard at Will.

Will ignored him and continued his way through the burnt curtains and cindered tiles.

{ _Petals of fabric flurried around the dance floor, the women's dresses like flowers spun in a whirling stream, the men's tail coats leaves that trailed not far behind them. Everyone wore a mask of a wide variety, colorful, muted, some lacy, some more transparent, others more firm, some nearly slipping off, at times placed on a stick handle, and few shielding the full wearer's face. There was an air of elation, a happy vibrancy that sprung the heels of every shoe, a rainbow of swaying ribbons, feathers, veils and sparks of gold and silver fluttered around in dance like birds in spring._

_Even Will was not left unmoved by the elegance and classical aestheticism, growing dizzy with the sensatory details all around him. As he walked through the ocean of twirling dance partners, he grew the sense that someone was watching him. He searched through the smiling, laughing faces of the crowd the way one looks for lost treasure, until his gaze rested on a man, stood unmoving from across the room. Despite the distance and the stranger's fully masked face Will saw his importance in his tall frame and poised gentility._

_Immediately,_ _Will found fate lied with him, the way one knew summer gave way to winter, as the crow flies a path ingrained so instinctually into its biological and mental apparatus, same as the ill and old looked into the grim reaper's eyes, and farmer sensed impending famine, he **knew.**_ _Will did what any sane man would, he turned tail, and fled._

_'Don't look a gift horse in the mouth' and all that nonsense that fulminantly doesn't seem so nonsensical anymore._

_He was half way across the other direction away from Fate before someone called:_

_"Will!"_

_A gentle arm took ahold of Will's arm, taking his attention._

_"Abigail?" Will asked, astonished._

_"Who else would it be, silly!" She laughed._

_"I thought...your father, he-"_

_He slashed your neck. Let you die in the kitchen floor. In the same house as your mother. I couldn't save you._

_"He's over there." Abigail nodded to someone behind Will. Instinctively, Will knew who stood there_ _without turning around._

_If either of his watchful audience noticed Will stiffen neither made comment on it. Will firmly sent his gaze downcast, studying the shy black toes of his shoes._

_"A pleasure to meet you, Abigail has told me much about you, **Will.** " _

_The way in which his name was said sent a tremor through Will's bones, unused to hearing the syllables uttered in a mystical hymn-like fashion._

_A white gloved hand extended itself under Will's view.}_

"I can't imagine you have. This place had a very strict policy on who it allowed entrance. Mostly those of royal descent or blue blood lineage," Jack said, eyebrows furrowed.

Will's palm grazed along the frayed red banister by a broken window.

_{"How long have you...been Abigail's guardian?" Will asked carefully._

_Red eyes flicked in Will's direction then back to the view outside the window._

_"Not long. She's a bright young girl, Will. She takes after you in the sense she observes very much."_

_"I'm not Abigail's father. Her father is dead. I killed him."_

_"Oh?"_

_"I only met her once."_

_"And now you have again. I suggest becoming thoroughly reacquainted with her in a proper manner, she cares about you a lot."_

_"Why?" Will said with a sense of loss._

_"It must be an affect you have on people. I find myself suddenly caring for you too, despite our short time of knowing each other."_

_Will smiled a bittersweet tune. "No. I don't. You two would be the first to have that reaction."_

_"I feel selfish admitting this, but if you'd do me the honor, I'd like to be the last." The words were whispered but they rung loud in Will's ears.}_

"You should head home."

"Okay."

"Get some sleep, Will. I want you ready to face tomorrow."

"Okay."

"Goodbye, Will."

"Goodbye, Jack."

When Will stared up at his celling that night he imagined blood red eyes gazing back down at him. The white of the ceiling reminded Will of Fate's ominous pale mask and how it covered his face in full.

He dreamed again of the same place as he had every night since Abigail's death. Each one carried a new addition to the unfolding story.

{ _Gentle lips kissed the back of Will's hand. He caught a small glimpse of them before the mask firmly hid them from view once more._

_The gloved hands lead Will towards the heart of the ballroom. Fate took Will in hand, his other on Will's waist, and pulled him closer as if he knew Will would try to escape. Will cast one more glance around the room, one more search for a lifeline before his heart succumbed to Fate's whims and caved._

_"You are violently persuasive," Will said, more than a tad disturbed he'd been coerced into dancing under the scrutiny of hundreds of gazes._

_The loud buzzing of the ballroom had lulled significantly as they observed the prized guest swaying Will with him._

_"Not fond of eye contact, are you?" Fate said._

_"Eyes are distracting."_

_"Not usually for me, but certainly yours are. It's why I want to look at them."_

_From an outsider's perspective Will's blue high low coat floated behind him, accentuating the black of Fate's cape as he spun him across the ballroom, same as a grey-blue sky kissed the reflective surface of a dark ocean where the horizon draws its border._

_Will felt flighty in every sense of the world, it seemed a bird could swoop in and take his stomach for a morsel and it would experience the same summersaults._

_One step his heart beat catches. Two steps his brain relinquishes all function, a very dangerous thing for someone who always frantically grasps for his senses. Three steps, his breath has stolen away to become wind's companion at his last exhale. And finally the anxiety leaves. In fact all thoughts and feelings leave. All there is left to take is what Fate has to offer, and how he feels becomes what Will feels._

_He's been seduced by death._

When Will woke he thrashed around the bed sheets, wrinkling them with his fists as he cried out a heart wrenching sob.

...

A pill. No one said anything.

_{Fate took him in dance again. This time he lead Will outside and showed him a beautiful garden with a fountain at its center. They sat there and talked for hours.}_

Another.

Will was tired. His coworker handed it to him with understanding in his gaze. "These cases are hard," He said.

_{There under the infinite moonlight, Fate kissed Will. Will felt he knew him far better than anyone in the waking life did. This was reflected in their kiss, the movement of their lips was sure, instinctive.}_

Three Pills.

Alana looked at him with a worried expression. "Trouble sleeping?"

"I have trouble waking."

_{Fate caressed Will gently, Will almost despised him for it._

_"Why do you frown, Will?" His eyes are as dark as drying blood._

_"You're making me addicted to you. You're doing this on purpose," Will accused._

_"What makes you think that?"_

_"Everytime I wake, I no longer feel. I used to at least feel my weaknesses. My exhaustion. My sadness. Now I don't feel anything. You're not even real! How can I miss someone who isn't even real?”_

_"Sure I am, Will. What we share is more real than anything either of us has experienced. That will always be undeniably real. Count on it."_

_"I want to count on you." Will sobbed. "I want you to be there with me when I wake. I want to feel you with my bare hands. I want to see you with my own eyes."_

_"Eyes are not to be trusted."_

_"You've made sure of that," Will spat out._

_"If I'm not real. If this travelling between worlds is just a farce made by our subconscious, it's you who has done this. Not me, the 'figment.'"}_

Will downs the whole bottle. The pills fly down his throat like small white and blue stones.

_{"This is the end."_

_"You can't end what was never there, Will."_

_The world around them crumbled. Fragments of the ballroom splintered and took flight into the infinite sky that never changed._

_The mirage faded to give way to sunrise. Will gasped, looked around him in shock._

_"That's not possible."_

_"Sure it is." Fate removed his mask._

_Will wasn't surprised by the face that had hid beneath it. He'd known his face all along. He always would._

"It wasn't my intention to end this place. To end you. I love you, Hannibal," Will murmured. “No one else seems to remember you except me. They don’t know about what you did. About what you are. They don’t even remember you having ever existed.”

"I made a place for you here Will. The destruction of this one is only the beginning. We can make as many worlds as we want. Destroy which ever ones if we so wish it. We are immortal."

"Everytime you disappear I am left broken. I can't continue to live without you. I realized this when I threw us off the cliff.”

"And you no longer will go on without me," Hannibal said with a smile. Rare and beautiful, one that never failed to make Will return it.

~~~~~~~

"Any sign of him?"

Jack looked to the thrashing waves below.

"No. No sign of the other person he mentioned either."

"Other person?" Jack frowned.

Alana sighed. "His name was written all over the walls of his house. Carved into not just the walls, but into the ceiling, the roof, the furniture."

"Who's?"

"Hannibal Lecter's. Whomever this man was it seems he meant a lot to Will. Though I couldn't find a trace of any person with that name having ever existed."

"So Will made him up." Jack sighed. "He lost himself to his delusions."

"I wouldn't be so sure." Alana looked to the waves below the cliff house. "I believe that wherever Will is, he is with him now."


End file.
